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Chengjiang Cambrian Biota Fossils


pleecan

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Continue... soft bodied preservation from Lower Cambrian era.

These are remarkable, with the tiny bumps and all! Good photo job. I just bought a few specimens from this site myself, can't wait to get them and put a magnifier on them, tho' they weren't advertised as having what yours has but you never know.

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Wrangellian: Please post your pic here if you wish... this is an open forum for all to post... the fauna / flora is similar to the Burgess Shale material and I using this as comparitive purposes as a predictor of the creatures at the Eramosa Lagerstatte site.... Looking forward to viewing your specimens from the Chengjiang...

PL

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Wrangellian: Please post your pic here if you wish... this is an open forum for all to post... the fauna / flora is similar to the Burgess Shale material and I using this as comparitive purposes as a predictor of the creatures at the Eramosa Lagerstatte site.... Looking forward to viewing your specimens from the Chengjiang...

PL

Once I get them I'll do that, but I doubt I'll see anything like yours. I'd like to get my hands on one of those soft-bodied creatures but they always go $ky high.

Where is the Eramosa site? never heard of it.

Edited by Wrangellian
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Actually in the article I linked in the other post, they did point out where the locality is.

SECRET

Take that...super secret fossil site.

cheers,

-PzF

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Ha ha!

Well I just read up on that site, sounds fantastic. I went to Burgess in I think 1991 as a teenager, which was a dream come true as well, but I never got to take part in the collecting of course, it was just the guided tour! I wonder why the ROM seems to have a monopoly on all the Paleozic Lagerstatten on Canada..... even the ones here in BC - Even the RBCM doesnt do any collecting there or anywhere else as far as I know.. doesn't seem right.

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Just to let you know I made a promise to the ROM about disclosure about the Eramosa site and as such I will keep that promise and I will no longer comment further with regards to this subject on this forum.

Peter

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Very nice.... You certainly have the photography sussed out these days peter... Its amazing what you discover on just one small chunk of rock....

Cheers Steve... And Welcome if your a New Member... :)

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Very nice.... You certainly have the photography sussed out these days peter... Its amazing what you discover on just one small chunk of rock....

Thanks Steve..... I am having lots of fun developing the art of high resolution macro photography on a small budget.... I also have been using old bellows technology for marco photography coupled with stacking software from Helicon Soft... where I got a free license for life to use their software technologies.

Peter

Edited by pleecan
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The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) has a monopoly on these Lagerstat simply because they have the money, and thus the palaeontologists, to undertake such investigations. The Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM) by contrast has at last count only one paleontolgically related position that is held by Richard Hebda (Botany and Earth History). As far as I know the only other person who has a paleontology background at the RBCM is Gavin Hanke. Dr. Hanke does have formal training as a vertebrate paleontologist but his title is Curator of Vertebrates.

The ROM has not always had the monopoly on the Burgess Shale. For many years the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC was the largest repository of Burgess Shale material with over 65,000 specimens collected by Charles Walcott. In fact for the longest time no Canadian Museum or University had a collection from the Burgess Shale. This situation led to collections being made first by the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and then the ROM. Now many Canadian institutions have representative collections of the world famous fossils and the ROM has the largest collection with over 150,000 individual specimens. So as you can see the research is centered around where the fossils are stored and the RBCM simply does not have the budget to curate such a world class collection from the Burgess Shale.

Dan

Too bad. Like I said, doesnt seem right. What is wrong with this province?.....

I know the RBCM has some Burgess fossils but not sure how many and wonder how they got them.

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I believe, if memory serves me right, that the RBCM acquired its Burgess Shale material from the GSC. As I mentioned in my previous post the GSC was tasked with making representative collections of Burgess Shale material, that was then given to various institutions such as the RBCM.

I had an opportunity to see the collection after it was rediscovered, after all but being forgotten about, in the late 1980s. As I recall the collection was not very large but there were some spectacular specimens. I believe that the collection is now curated in an area of the museum where it will not soon be forgotten.

It really is too bad that the province of British Columbia has no real significant display or collection of its own. I also understand that Parks Canada still owns all of the specimens that are currently held at the ROM so at least the fossils are being preserved for future generations.

Dan

P.S. Please forgive me Peter for hijacking your topic. I had no intentions of doing so but felt a need to address Eric's (Wrangellian) questions and this is a topic close to my heart. If anyone would like to discuss this further perhaps we should start a new topic, if one doesn't already exist.

I agree I didn't mean to hijack the topic, we can get back to Chengjiang if we want to.. I have no more questions about ROM/RBCM anyway, unless someone else has more to say on it I wouldnt mind picking it up in a new thread.

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Paleopix underscores the glaring deficiencies of these generally over-reaching and over-bearing institutions for the advancement and propagation of knowledge. While we all salivate at the thought of unfettered access to these venerable collections the truth is that these fossils are merely pawns in the never ending game of what happens to be fashionable at any given moment for the bureaucrats to politicize. I can only dream of a day when real access is granted to 'all' via a virtual repository of genuine substance. Yes, the professional paleos earn their mettle but let's face it guys, the so called amateurs have and always will be the backbone of discovery and elucidation. Nothing dramatic just my ₵.02

image.png.a84de26dad44fb03836a743755df237c.png

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Paleopix underscores the glaring deficiencies of these generally over-reaching and over-bearing institutions for the advancement and propagation of knowledge. While we all salivate at the thought of unfettered access to these venerable collections the truth is that these fossils are merely pawns in the never ending game of what happens to be fashionable at any given moment for the bureaucrats to politicize. I can only dream of a day when real access is granted to 'all' via a virtual repository of genuine substance. Yes, the professional paleos earn their mettle but let's face it guys, the so called amateurs have and always will be the backbone of discovery and elucidation. Nothing dramatic just my ₵.02

Do you mean access to the collections in the museums that are normally hidden away and not seen by the general public? What does it take to get to see them, anyway, in say the RBCM or ROM?

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Do you mean access to the collections in the museums that are normally hidden away and not seen by the general public? What does it take to get to see them, anyway, in say the RBCM or ROM?

A few best selling books and a Discovery or Nat Geo show will get you in the door. A million dollar endowment is an easy fast track for sure. Seriously though, what a shame when you consider the hundreds of thousands of fossils that cannot even be shown? I suppose that is the business of a museum and its board of trustees to decide.

I have many more paragraphs possible here so at this point before the altitude sickness gets the better of me I'll make my descent back to base camp where there is more oxygen to breathe .... yes, better now and I can feel the keys beneath my finger tips again. What were you guys saying about hijacking the topic? Oh that's right - back to the Chengjiang Cambrian Biota Fossils :P

image.png.a84de26dad44fb03836a743755df237c.png

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Okay Guys... Enough !... out of courtesy.... please take your ranting else where .... lets stay on topic ... the original thread intent.... as the title suggests.

PL

Edited by pleecan
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WOW!! thats excellent preservation!

what else has been found in that fm.?

Edited by trilobite guy

-Shamus

The Ordovician enthusiast.

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Awesome piece , thr is also a third discovery tha shares the samecharasterictics of Burgess shale and Chengjiang Biota , the only diffrence is in the geological time , the new soft bodied fossils discovered in Morocco are Ordovician , i m posting some pics and hop to find help in identifying them .

Malek

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post-1153-082758400 1290783397_thumb.jpg

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Wow these are fantastic! Ordovician soft tissue preservation from the Morocco Lagerstatte... and extremely rare material.... you are so lucky to be near such a unique site.... I am going to have a closer look at these fossils... I would not be surprised to see Cambrian creatures in the Ordovician .... as also witness in the Silurian Lagerstatte.

Edited by pleecan
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Okay Guys... Enough !... out of courtesy.... please take your ranting else where .... lets stay on topic ... the original thread intent.... as the title suggests.

PL

I can not agree more with Peter on this point!!!! Out of courtesy to Peter and the original thread, I have chosen to remove all of my posts that are off topic. My apologies again to you Peter.

I will initiate a new thread so the discussion can be held at a more appropriate location.

Dan

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  • 1 month later...

OK here are my relatively humble Chengjiang specimens... as promised I finally took photos, tho I still haven't mastered the art of it..

post-4372-0-85939800-1293516892_thumb.jpg

Arthropod: Kunmingella sp.

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Arthropod: Isoxys sp.

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Brachiopod: Heliomedusa sp. (thought at first to be a jellyfish, hence the name) Too bad about the pits.. guess that's why it was so cheap. The fine cilia(?) are just barely visible around the rim.

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